A Sherwood-area wildcat rescue has been fined $5,600 for two serious violations that a state agency says contributed to the fatal cougar mauling of the sanctuary's head keeper last November.

According to the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division, an inspector concluded that WildCat Haven Sanctuary did not have enough staff to operate safely, that the nonprofit regularly violated its own safety practices for interacting with cougars and that the enclosures for those cats had unsafe design features and inadequate equipment. The factors contributed to workers repeatedly putting themselves in direct contact with cougars.

Renee Radziwon-Chapman, 36, an animal care technician and WildCat's head keeper for eight years, was killed Nov. 9 when she was attacked while cleaning a cougar enclosure alone. She apparently tried to lock out three cougars in the enclosure but was unable to do so before at least one attacked her, an Oregon OSHA report said.

The sanctuary was issued a $2,800 fine for the safety procedural violations and another $2,800 fine for the unsafe cougar enclosure design features, the report said. The base penalty for each citation is $7,000, but OSHA subtracts 60 percent for employers with 25 employees or less. The report says WildCat Haven has three employees.

Michael and Cheryl Tuller founded WildCat Haven Sanctuary in 2001. The organization rescues cougars, tigers, bobcats and other wildcats and sits on about 8 acres of land near Sherwood. The Tullers still run the nonprofit with Michael as its president and Cheryl as its executive director. The sanctuary is closed to the public.

In addition to the citations, WildCat Haven is required to fix the violations, said Melanie Mesaros, an Oregon OSHA spokeswoman. By the time an OSHA inspection began on Nov. 12, the nonprofit had started improving locks on the cougar lockout cages and other improvements, she said.

WildCat Haven has 30 days to appeal the citations, starting from the date Oregon OSHA receives confirmation that the sanctuary received its notice of the fines, Mesaros said.

WildCat Haven's protocol requires the presence of at least two qualified staff members working together to make sure the cougars in the enclosures are placed in lockout cages. Once that happens, one of the staffers can enter the enclosure to clean or make repairs.

Renee Radziwon-Chapman

Radziwon-Chapman had worked eight-hour shifts by herself on the day she was killed and the previous day, the report said. The only other qualified staff members -- Michael and Cheryl Tuller and WildCat Haven advisory board member Tim Adams -- were all out of town.

The sanctuary has 65 cats and 28 enclosures that needed to be cleaned every other day. They wouldn't have been cleaned if Radziwon-Chapman didn't do it alone, the report said.

According to the report, Radziwon-Chapman sent Cheryl Tuller several text messages before the attack saying that she needed more help.

"Working alone was (a) regular occurrence," the report said.

Radziwon-Chapman entered the enclosure with three cougars --Cody, Leo and Caden -- sometime in the mid-afternoon on Nov. 9, the report said. Caden was inside a lockout cage when one or both of the other large cats attacked her.

Michael Tuller returned to his home, which is on the sanctuary property, about 5:30 p.m. that day, the report said. He called 911 about 7 p.m. when he discovered Radziwon-Chapman wounded and lying in the enclosure with the two roaming cougars.

Tuller managed to pull Radziwon-Chapman out of the enclosure but she was already dead, the report said.

The root cause of Radziwon-Chapman's death was her working alone and entering the enclosure without properly locking out the cougars, according to the report.

But there were other factors as well. The gate latch on the lockout chamber for the three cougars was described as "light-duty," "substandard," likely to pop open inadvertently and remain unsecure if not completely closed.

"These latches are not appropriate for securing dangerous cougars," the report said.

To fully secure that lockout chamber latch, a worker would have to go inside the enclosure and attach a carabiner clip onto the latch's lock fitting, which would expose the worker to cougars in the unsecured lockout, the report said.

Also, an adjacent enclosure that housed two other cougars had no independent entry door. This forced workers to walk through the first enclosure to access the second, meaning all five cougars in the two enclosures had to be locked out before anyone safely entered the second cage.

"This poor design made cleaning a very time consuming task and added to the challenges of the under staffed keeping crew," the report said. "It compelled the keepers to violate the lockout policy."

The sanctuary had also outgrown its space and the land's incline made it difficult to build enclosures, the report said. The existing enclosures were cramped.

The Tullers plan to move the sanctuary to a more than 80-acre property in Scotts Mills in Marion County. The building of the new facility took a lot of the Tullers' time and attention, according to the report. Michael Tuller was in Marion County and Cheryl Tuller was in Minnesota while Radziwon-Chapman was working alone at the sanctuary, the report said.

Since the cougar attack, WildCat Haven has improved the quality of the locks on the lockout cages, Mesaros said. They also can now be accessed from outside the enclosure.

WildCat Haven Sanctuary also released a statement in response to the citations saying they've since addressed their violations.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

*Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated how OSHA calculated the fines.